A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage (Sagan)
April 6th, 2008 | Published in Psychology, Quotes, Religion, Science, Truth | 11 Comments
[This quote is a bit long, but I thought it was a good response to paranormal claims.]
“A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage.”
Suppose … I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you’d want to check it out, see for yourself….
“Show me,” you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle—but no dragon.
“Where’s the dragon?” you ask.
“Oh, she’s right here,” I reply, waving vaguely. “I neglected to mention that she’s an invisible dragon.”
You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon’s footprints.
“Good idea,” I say, “but this dragon floats in the air.”
Then you’ll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.
“Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless.”
You’ll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.
“Good idea, except she’s an incorporeal dragon and the paint won’t stick.”
And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won’t work.
Now, what’s the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there’s no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it is true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I’m asking you do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.
The only thing you’ve really learned from my insistence that there’s a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You’d wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I’ve seriously underestimated human fallibility….
Now another scenario: Suppose it’s not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you’re pretty sure don’t know each other, all tell you they have dragons in their garages—but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we’re disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I’d rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren’t myths after all…
Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they’re never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself: On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon’s fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such “evidence”—no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it—is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.
—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (Ballantine Books: 1995), pp. 171-173.
April 6th, 2008 at 10:12 am (#)
The scope of “evidence” that he’ll accept is small-minded.
According to this example, love would be a dragon in the garage.
Name any “evidence” that your wife loves you and and I’ll give you another way it could legitimately be explained. So what that millions of people believe there’s such a thing as love. There is no “proof” that it exists. They must all be deluded.
So “the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the [love] hypothesis,” right?
To reduce the world to what can be explained scientifically is inhuman. Fortunately, it’s also impossible.
April 6th, 2008 at 2:01 pm (#)
That is a good counterexample, though Sagan is really applying this to paranormal claims like UFO abductions and pseudoscience.
I actually do think there is evidence for love, though of course it all depends on how you define love. If my wife, for example, said she loved me, but cheated on me, spoke poorly to me, and hit me at every opportunity, I would have plenty of evidence to doubt that what she is saying is true. However, if she says she loves me and her actions are consistent with that, then I have evidence that she does really love me.
So I would say the proof of love is in its actions. This is why we can say that an abusive husband doesn’t love his wife even if he claims to.
Or am I missing your point?
I agree it’s impossible to reduce everything to what can be tested scientifically. But I also think that if someone claims they get abducted, they need real evidence, otherwise we have no reason to believe them.
I’m not sure I agree his scope of evidence is “small-minded.” I’m sure he accepts more than lab-testable results. There is also evidence of history, of testimony, of logic, etc.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:17 am (#)
If there’s no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it is true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I’m asking you do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.
You mean, like the evolution story.
Whose proponents will insist (with apoplexy) is testable, as long as by “test” you don’t mean something you can actually, you know, set up, do, and repeat.
April 7th, 2008 at 7:50 am (#)
Holmegm,
I’m often surprised at your comments about evolution. Have you read any good books on evolution apart from creationist authors? Like Bryson or Gould or Miller or Zimmer? It seems like your picture of evolution is quite a straw man.
May 30th, 2008 at 5:28 am (#)
Have you read any good books on evolution apart from creationist authors?
Yes, I have. My position is not based on ignorance, but genuine informed disagreement.
December 4th, 2008 at 3:41 pm (#)
Abraham writes: “To reduce the world to what can be explained scientifically is inhuman. Fortunately, it’s also impossible.”
That says more about the current state of science than it does the current state of the world.
September 6th, 2009 at 8:51 am (#)
Love? No love is not even in the same proof as god. Love is a concept that is ambiguous. Just like the word “hot” or “delicious.” Does delicious exist? Apologists are trying make a god an existent force in the universe. Don’t confuse it with a proof of an ambiguous form.
December 17th, 2009 at 8:52 pm (#)
@Abraham – ‘Name any “evidence” that your wife loves you and and I’ll give you another way it could legitimately be explained’
That’s just it, there is no evidence at all given for the dragon, only the fact that it can’t be disproven- as Josh said there is evidence for love.
July 12th, 2010 at 7:01 pm (#)
Holmegm,
Your lack of knowledge of genetics and the breeding of characteristics in both domestic animals, and domestic agriculture, along with easily reproduced examples in the insect and small animal worlds in response to environment pressures is only proof of you ignorance, not you knowledge of an alternative explanation.
Specific examples fall under the description of “evidence” and they are easily provided. You were even given authors to read for the specifics. If you choose to ignore the information, that is not lack of evidence in any way.
February 24th, 2011 at 6:20 pm (#)
I know this is not the point of this post, but I’m curious on how the author would comment to this..
Well, unless my knowledge of dragons are incorrect, I think dragons can’t just float in the air without flapping it’s wings, so if it really does exist, there should be wind blowing from inside the garage in a closed space..
Or I could also ask the one who thinks that the dragon’s there in the garage,
- “Then how do you know that the dragon exists, when it’s invisible and incorporeal?”
- “Could you prove to me that you know it exists? How did you come to think that it exists?”
- “If there are no solid evidences that can prove its existence, then maybe it might not even exist in the first place, don’t you think?”
- “If you’re still insisting that it really does exist, and that you are 100& sure of it, then what will your response be when I also say that I’m 100% positive that it doesn’t exist? You do need to do or say something to make my opinion change, right? You can’t just say you’re god and then expect me to believe all you said without giving me a single proof.. If you did make some miracles or something that I saw with my own eyes, then I maybe have to reconsider my opinion once more. But if you don’t, then don’t expect me to believe in what you said.. Perhaps you should start asking yourself whether the thing that you believed in is true or not, considering that no(?) “normal people” believes you.”
Well jokes apart… :) I believe that something that can’t be scientifically explain, or be given evidence is the human soul.. Do you ever wonder how is it that you could do the things you do, like seeing, hearing, remembering? Sure science can explain that there are organs like eyes, ears, and brains that make us able to do such things. But what makes it possible for you to actually experience the things that you did? Why did you live inside your body? Why can’t you move to somebody else’s body and control it if both bodies have the same organs? How do you proof that somebody is even living, I mean have conscious as you do? That person could be living because his heart is beating, but can you proof that he actually “lives”? Just like animals and plants, you know that it lives, but do you know whether they have the same conscious as we did? Well, not wanting to sound more crazy than this, but this is probably the one and only (maybe ;p) question that I really would love to know the answer of.
November 4th, 2011 at 2:52 am (#)
Somebody @ 10:
I believe that something that can’t be scientifically explain, or be given evidence is the human soul.
There is no evidence that there is such a thing as a soul, and one would have to have a clear idea of what this word means before there could be.
Do you ever wonder how is it that you could do the things you do, like seeing, hearing, remembering? Sure science can explain that there are organs like eyes, ears, and brains that make us able to do such things. But what makes it possible for you to actually experience the things that you did?
Do you mean why is there subjective experience? No one knows exactly, but we do know a great deal about how we can physically do such things as form memories and make decisions (in fact, neural nets are capable of both these things, and they are employed in computer science to make programs that can learn). We know that our subjective experience will change in response to drugs or other physical changes in the brain. We even have experiments showing that the brain starts making decisions before we are aware of them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will#Timing_intentions_compared_to_actions
This all stands to reason if our subjective experience arises somehow from our brains (the early brain activity is the process of the person making the decision), but isn’t consistent with the idea of an immaterial observer that’s pulling the strings. In fact, it’s not clear what such a ghost in the machine would explain. It wouldn’t explain anything about consciousness, just push it back a step.
Why did you live inside your body? Why can’t you move to somebody else’s body and control it if both bodies have the same organs?
No, they don’t have the same organs, in particular they have different brains. That is why you cannot move to their body. If you want your mind in someone else’s body, you would have to somehow transplant your brain there. I don’t think the technology to do this is anywhere on the horizon at the moment.
How do you proof that somebody is even living, I mean have conscious as you do? That person could be living because his heart is beating, but can you proof that he actually “lives”?
No, I cannot absolutely prove that other people have conscious experience. I do have evidence, though. I know that I have conscious experience associated with the complex actions that I perform, and I know that I am biologically similar to the people around me, and that they behave much like I do.
To know something, you don’t have to have absolute certainty. That’s almost impossible to find. The best we can do is look at what the evidence tells us and try to devise new ways to test that.
Just like animals and plants, you know that it lives, but do you know whether they have the same conscious as we did?
We don’t. But we do have good reason to think that at least many animals are conscious, simply based on their behaviors and their biological similarity to us. We don’t know what other kinds of systems may be conscious.
The temptation for most people is to think of consciousness as if it is some irreducible entity (in fact, we know that the mental functions we have conscious experience of are modular to some degree, and can be separated by brain damage, as in patients whose corpus callosum was severed). But given the evidence that our conscious experience is caused by physical processes that we do not consider conscious, it seems more likely that it is an emergent property that exists at certain scales of organization. The classic example is wetness. We can describe what wetness is, and show that it applies to water. But we also know that a single molecule of water is not “wet” in any meaningful way. “Wet” only makes sense on the scale of many interacting water molecules. In the same way, a neuron is not conscious, but a collection of neurons organized in a particular way is.
Many people will not be satisfied unless they can believe that they are a fundamental, indivisible entity that doesn’t arise from simpler, non-conscious parts. The evidence suggests otherwise, though.